Wooden Boats

As a young man, I spent a formative year working on an oil tanker followed by a season on a commercial fishing boat. I came to realize that people who earn their living at sea have a special relationship with boats. Boat owners spend huge amounts of time maintaining their boats; they then spend even more time thinking about maintaining them. When a boat comes to the end of its life, its owner is often the last to let it go because he is still holding on to his plans to fix her up again. Some old boats that need work are put in boat sheds, up on cribbing, or in a cradle where they just wait for their owner to get the money or interest or energy to put them back in the water…many of them just keep waiting.

My wife calls this series of photographs “Hope Springs Eternal”…I think of it as “The Boulevard of Shattered Dreams and Broken Promises”.